The objective of this book is to provide a systematic analysis of how we think about age of consent laws and the regulation of young people’s sexuality.  The book seeks to illuminate the issue by exploring international and historical evidence on how societies regulate sexual behaviour. It employs perspectives from contemporary social and political theory to analyse changing rationales for age of consent laws.  A central purpose of this book is to explore and illuminate how we have thought, and should think, about age of consent laws – although the implications of the analysis for contemporary policy-making are also addressed in the final chapters.